January 2, 1891 to October 5, 1897

In the summer of 1894 there was hope for a new way of life in the reconstruction of the South. E.B. Gaston took a group of people down to Baldwin County, Alabama on the Mobile Bay. A colony free from all forms of private monopoly, a colony where working people could come together to form a single-tax community was founded. Members of the Fairhope Industrial Association were all followers of economist...

In 1894, a rendezvous of committed single taxers converged upon Mobile Alabama. A “light breeze was blowing out of the north, the air was crisp, and the promise was for a fair day.” Twenty-eight people; seven couples, nine children, and five single men mostly strangers to each other arrived from across the United States on the word of their leader...

On December 16, 1894 a man in Richmond County, Virginia, recorded the weight of hogs that he killed. He killed over 4000 pounds of hogs, but gave away 400 pounds to a friend. Perhaps the meat would provide for his family throughout the cold winter, or he might sell it to a local market. Either way, livestock was an important alternative to crops, which were difficult to depend on as they often had...

Clarke County, Alabama was the site of great social and political discontent throughout the late 1800's. Affects of the Civil War had created a dominant middle class, as well as a strong African American vote, in Clarke County. When the 1892 elections for Governor of Alabama arrived, most Clarke County residents supported one of two political parties- the Democratic Party or the Farmer's...

According to The State, at two in the morning of September 27, Calvin Stewart was lynched. After being captured due to accusations of murdering Charles Carter, a white man, on September 16, Stewart was taken to Langley to be held for several hours; however, a mass of angry whites gathered and a group of men escorted Stewart toward Aiken in hopes of getting him to a jail for safe keeping...

On September 15, 1891, Mexican Catarino Garza led twenty-six armed men across the Rio Grande in an attempt at a Texas-based revolution against the Mexican regime of Porfirio Diaz. Thus began a series of disturbances known as the Garza War or the Tin Horn War in which Garza recruited rebels to fight against the Mexican government by launching attacks from across the border in Texas. In this way...

The big issue leading up to the election of 1896 was the question of the free coinage of silver. With the decline of the economy following Grover Cleveland's election and his repealing of the Sherman Silver Purchase act, his Democratic base began to falter, and the Populist Party support of the free coinage of silver began to invade much of the Democratic...

On January 23, 1895, the Alabama Birmingham Age-Herald published a front page article titled Beyond Any Doubt, Two leading Cotton Mills of Lowell, Mass. Will Come South and Build.' The Massachusetts legislative committee on mercantile affairs heard the petitions of two cotton mills, Boott and Merrimac, to manufacture goods outside of the commonwealth. The mills were created in 1835 for...

Judge M.L. Buchwalter lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. He convicted a prisoner and sent him to Kentucky. Once he arrived in Kentucky, not long after he got off the train, the prisoner was lynched. This greatly disturbed Judge Buchwalter, and the next time Kentucky asked him to send his prisoner to their state, he worried about what would happen to the prisoner. He first contacted Kentucky and pleaded...

On an ordinary day in Rogersville the Southern Railway train, run by Conductor Shell, pulled into the station to unload its cargo of flour and take on the next load of lumber. Lewis Boyd, a black man, hopped up into the car to help unload the flour. As he removed the sacks of flour from the car, he happened to throw some of them to the ground. Conductor Shell reprimanded Boyd for his carelessness...